u/Pappe-is-a-baddie

A tired founder trying to figure it all out!

I’ve been having constant debates with myself.. being a bride obviously I want the best wedding possible.. good destination.. amazing views.. intimate gathering, one good reception.. and once I calculated.. it’s about 1.5-2cr easy!!
I could literally do a super luxury world tour for a year with that kind of money. But wedding is something that ( hopefully) will happen only once and I will have rest of my life for the rest of the luxury.. but then it’s 2 effing crores..

Happily Married women.. what do you suggest??

We talk about freedom like it just means having the option to choose.

But I keep thinking about how often women technically can make a choice, and still end up thinking if my family be okay with this? will people understand? Am I being selfish? Is this what I'm supposed to do?

You can have a career, earn your own money, live independently, make your own decisions... and still have all these invisible things sitting in the background of every decision.

Which made me wonder:How free is a choice if you're already thinking about everyone's reaction before you've even made it?

Not trying to make this sound super deep lol. I just genuinely wonder where the line is between having the freedom to choose and actually feeling free enough to choose what you want.

Maybe that's the part of independence we don't talk about enough.

Not just having options, but being able to pick one without feeling like you have to explain or justify why you picked it.

On that note, well, happy independence day!

I realised this a few months ago when I was talking to my mother about money.

She was telling me how, when she was younger, her mother would constantly remind her to save. If she got some extra money, put it aside. If she wanted to buy something expensive, think twice. Always keep some money in the bank because you never know what can happen.
And she did exactly that.
She's actually very good at saving money. Much better than I am.
But somewhere in the conversation I asked her, “Okay, but what did you do with all the money you saved?”

And the answer was basically, “It stayed in the bank.”
That conversation stayed with me because I realised how similar my own relationship with money had been.

Growing up, being good with money was always presented as being careful with it. Don't spend too much. Don't buy things just because you want them. Keep money aside. Have some savings for emergencies.
Nobody really explained what you were supposed to do once you had saved enough.
I remember getting my first decent salary and feeling incredibly responsible because I was putting a portion of it into my savings account every month. I genuinely thought I was doing everything right.

Then one day I was talking to a friend who was investing and she started throwing around words like mutual funds, index funds, equity, SIPs, asset allocation, compounding.
I nodded like I understood half of it.

I didn't.

And I was embarrassed to admit that.
The funny thing is, I wasn't bad at maths. I wasn't irresponsible with money. I wasn't living beyond my means. I just had absolutely no idea how to make a decision about money beyond “save it.”

So I started trying to learn.
And that's when I realised how overwhelming the whole thing can be if nobody has ever taught you the basics.

You search “how should I invest my money?” and suddenly you're watching someone explain 14 different types of mutual funds.

You ask someone what they invest in and they tell you what works for them, without explaining why it works for them.

You read about stocks and everyone has a different opinion, hear “long term” so often that it starts sounding like a magical answer to everything.

And somewhere in all of this, I understood something that I don't think we talk about enough.

A woman can be financially responsible and still not be financially confident.

She can save every month, avoid unnecessary debt, have an emergency fund and still have no idea whether her money is actually working for her.

And I don't think that's because women are inherently less interested in investing.

We're just given a very different relationship with money from the beginning.

We're told money is something to be protected.

Be careful, don't lose it, don't take unnecessary risks, save for a rainy day etc etc..

Which are all good lessons.

But eventually someone has to teach you what comes after saving.

Because ₹10 lakh sitting in a bank account and ₹10 lakh that's been thoughtfully allocated towards different goals are technically the same amount of money. But they aren't doing the same job for you.

And I wish someone had explained that to me much earlier without making me feel stupid for not knowing.

I also wonder how many other women have had the same experience.

You were taught to save. You became very good at saving and then you reached a point where you realised:

“Wait. What am I actually supposed to do with this money now?”

Did anyone teach you how to invest, or did you have to figure it out yourself?

For a country that loves telling women how to live their lives, India does a remarkably bad job of teaching us how money works.

We are taught how to be good daughters, good wives, good mothers. We are taught how to host relatives, how to adjust, how to save, how to stretch a household budget till it is practically begging for mercy. We are taught that gold is important, that "beta some money should always be kept aside", that we should marry someone financially stable. But nobody actually sits us down and explains what a mutual fund is.

Growing up, I don't remember women being included in financial conversations. The men discussed property prices, tax-saving investments, stocks, business deals, insurance policies. The women discussed school admissions, groceries, wedding planning, which cousin said what to whom. And before anyone says this isn't true anymore, just look around at most Indian families. Ask yourself who is usually handling the investments and who is usually asking where the electricity bill receipt is.

Indian women are actually expected to perform financial miracles while being denied financial education. We are expected to run households, compare prices, make budgets work, plan weddings, care for children and ageing parents, somehow make one salary stretch across fifteen different responsibilities, and yet many of us reach our twenties and thirties without understanding basic investing.

I know women with postgraduate degrees who are intimidated by the stock market. Women running entire homes who have never been told how EPF works. Women who earn well but keep their money sitting in savings accounts because nobody ever explained their options to them. And honestly, why would they know? Where were they supposed to learn it?

Schools don't teach it. Families often don't teach it. And money is still treated like some secret knowledge that gets passed from father to son.

The thing is, this isn't just about investing. People hear "financial literacy" and immediately think stocks and trading and all that. It's much bigger than that. It's about understanding how loans work before you sign one. It's about knowing what happens if your spouse dies unexpectedly. It's about being able to read your own insurance policy. It's about knowing whether you're being scammed. It's about having the confidence to leave a bad situation because you know you can survive on your own.

Money is freedom. That's the uncomfortable truth underneath all of this.

A woman who understands money has choices. She can leave. She can negotiate. She can say no. She can build something of her own. Financial independence doesn't magically solve sexism, but it definitely makes sexism a lot harder to enforce.

And yet we still raise girls with this strange contradiction. We tell them to study, get jobs, become independent, but many families still don't include them in discussions about property, inheritance, taxes or investments. There are daughters who know exactly how much turmeric goes into a family recipe but have no idea what assets their family owns.

Then there's the cultural expectation that men will handle it anyway. Until they don't.

Women live longer. Women get divorced. Women are widowed. Women become single mothers. Women become caregivers. Life happens. And when it does, financial ignorance becomes incredibly expensive.

What's frustrating is that Indian women are not bad with money. In fact, I'd argue the opposite. Anyone who has seen an Indian mother run a household budget during inflation knows she could probably run a hedge fund if given the opportunity. The problem was never capability. The problem was access.

We don't need more lectures about empowering women. We need girls to grow up hearing conversations about SIPs and taxes at the dining table. We need parents to teach daughters the same things they teach sons. We need schools to teach actual life skills instead of pretending compound interest is less important than memorising facts for an exam.

Because honestly, in a country where women are expected to manage everything, it's ridiculous that so many of us are still expected to learn about money by accident.

And maybe that's the real issue. Financial literacy in India is still treated as optional knowledge for women when it should be considered basic survival knowledge. Nobody would expect a woman to go through life without learning how to read, so why are we still comfortable with women going through life without understanding money?

Also, for the financially savvy women here: how did you learn? What books, newspapers, newsletters, YouTube channels, apps or resources would you recommend to someone trying to get better with money? I'm always looking to learn more, and I'd love to hear what's actually helped you.